Tag: downtowncc

Looks like the old Burger King on south Carson, the one that just closed last month, already has found a new tenant. Today they were putting up signs that say "Coming Soon, Super Burrito". Super Burrito is a small Mexican food chain based out of Reno, with only two stores in Reno and Sparks. Looks like this will be their third.

I've never been to Super Burrito so I can't say how good the food is, or if this new place will be a permanent addition to Carson City. Has anyone out there partaken of a Super Burrito?

Update: Pictures of the signs they put up yesterday. Good to know I wasn't seeing things!

The Downtowner Motor Inn has had a rough few years. It was closed for a while to remove asbestos, they had their electricity shut off for not paying bills, they've been through bouts of tax evasion, foreclosure, a revolving door of new owners, along with a whole list of other problems and violations. Plus people like me calling for it to just be torn down and made into a park. Whoever owns it now must think the name is cursed, because the motel is no longer known as the Downtowner. It is now the "Back on Track Inn."

The name alludes to the V&T Railroad that used to run down Washington Street, just a few yards from the front door of the motel. And the old railroad depot which is still standing across the street. It could also refer to the fact that the owners want to fix the problems with the place and get it "back on track" to being a respectable lodging house.

But I doubt a name change is going to fix any of the problems. It's still ugly, it's still probably going to cater to long-term residents rather than tourists, and changing the name isn't going to repair the reputation. If the owners really want to get back on track and gain respect, this is just the first of many long steps to take.

Update: Kirk Caraway points out in the comments an article he wrote in the Nevada Appeal from June about the name change. I guess it just took them a while to make the signs. And I remember seeing that article, but I forgot about the name change as soon as I read that the new owner wanted to paint the motel fluorescent.

The Carson City downtown revitalization plan is still chugging along. The whole project is dedicated to making downtown a more attractive place to visit, both for tourists and for locals. In the past the planning has focused on Carson Street, and what to do after through traffic has been diverted to the new freeway. That included ideas to make Carson Street two lanes and making the sidewalks wider, making downtown more friendly to pedestrians and less friendly to cars. Also for the last couple of years attention has been paid to Curry Street, rebranding it as the "Curry Street Promenade" and scheduling events during the summer to bring people downtown. But now they're looking at what new construction should be in Carson City's future to entice people downtown.

The focus of the planning right now is on relocating the Carson City Library downtown, giving that organization the updated facilities it desperately needs while also making the library part of downtown, rather than the isolated island it is now. The Carson Nugget is working closely with the city on this, trying to create a public-private partnership that ends up benefiting everyone. Also involved is the Hop and Mae Adams Trust, established by the founders of the Nugget as a way to give back to the community. Both of the founders of the Nugget are deceased now, Hop in 2003 and Mae just a couple of weeks ago. She bequeathed much of her money into this trust that would be used to revitalize downtown Carson City, and that includes creating these partnerships between the casino and the town, and giving up much of the Nugget's vast sprawling parking lot to build a new civic center.

Over the years, as talk of reenvisioning Carson City has swirled around, I've always looked at the large Nugget parking lot as the obvious place for new development. Parking lots cover an astounding 8 blocks behind the Nugget, stretching from Musser to Robinson. Some of that is State parking for the Capitol and State Archive, but much of it is owned by the Nugget and is rarely full. Two years ago I wrote a huge post about the future of downtown, and pegged these parking lots as the ideal birthplace for Carson City's future.

The thing about good ideas is that everyone seems to have them at once, so now this week new plans have surfaced for how to use all that land. The parking that is there now would be sent to underground garages (I said above-ground garages), and all 8 blocks would be developed. The new library would be here, along with a large plaza, maybe a park, maybe a space for the ice rink, and also plenty of retail, office, and even residential space. The plan even has a website now, www.nevadasworkingcapital.com, with a lot of the ideas spelled out and even a bit of concept art. Some of the possibilities listed there:

• A third-millennium knowledge and discovery library
• A business & technology incubator center
• A digital media lab
• class A office space
• commercial / retail space
• residential, in-town housing
• IMAX Theater
• transit hub
• public plaza
• shared de-centralized parking

How much of this will actually end up downtown remains to be seen. The city isn't going to be building most of it themselves, what they're trying to do is plant seeds and get private developers excited about the possibilities downtown holds. You've got to get shopkeepers and restaurants to want to open up downtown, and to drive all this you have to get Carson City residents thinking of downtown as a place to go on the weekend and kill a few hours.

It's a lot of work to get there from here, but there are the beginnings of all of it to be seen. Downtown already has several good restaurants, like B'sghetti's, Firkin and Fox, the Basil, and Kim Lee's. Drive by Comma Coffee most nights, and you'll see people spilling out onto the sidewalk. And of course the Nugget is one of the most popular casinos in town, and the reason they're behind this partnership is because they know bringing more people to downtown will only benefit their business.

But there's a lot to overcome, starting with an economy where the city can barely pay the bills they have now, much less go on a building spree. There are already a lot of empty storefronts downtown as it is, and adding new space when you can't fill the space you have isn't a great idea. For every B'sghetti's you have someplace like CaiE's Oriental Cafe, where hype doesn't lead to customers and the business fails. Plus, let's face it, much of downtown Carson City is just ugly, and the facades clash with each other. Downtown is not an attractive place right now, except for a few pockets, and that's one of the biggest obstacles to these plans. Luckily the plans involve beautification projects.

So there's a lot up in the air right now, and where it will all land is anybody's guess. It seems too good to be true for all of it to come to be. And I think downtown Carson has too many problems that can't be overcome completely, and will never be the kind of downtown other cities have. A couple of months ago we found ourselves in downtown Concord, California, and in Todos Santos Plaza. This is a grassy public park that takes up an entire block right in the heart of downtown, ringed with a mix of historic and new buildings. The whole area was incredibly vibrant, with restaurants, stores, office space, lots of pedestrians and popular enough that there was no parking to be found. The park had a large playground, and kids were out playing well past their bedtime. Ours included. It's the kind of place that Carson really can never have, because it can't be planned, it has to grow organically. I don't think we have the population necessary to support it either. So downtown Carson has the potential to be a lot better than it is now, but there are limits to how great it can be.

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

The Firkin and Fox Pub is now on Flickr. At first they've only put up pictures from around the restaurant, but maybe as time goes on they'll put up photos of their employees, their regular customers, and the events that happen on Third Street right outside the restaurant.

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

The Firkin and Fox is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Some photos from Saturday's farmers market on 3rd Street.

This story is a few days old, but according to News Carson City the Arlington Square ice skating rink was a big money pit for everybody involved last winter. The ticket sales they took in came nowhere close to covering the costs of operating it, and the benefit to downtown businesses was probably pretty negligible. I guess Carson doesn't have enough people to make something like that a big draw, but at the same time it's so big that downtown isn't really the "heart of town" like it would be in a smaller town. We're kind of in that middle grey area. where a town is just big enough for downtown to mostly be irrelevant. That's a big challenge facing the efforts to revitalize downtown.

The final bottom line on the Carson City skating rink is $130,000 in red ink, so it's doubtful that we'll see the rink back next year.

There was an article in Tuesday's paper (not available online) that outlines the latest developments in the saga of the Downtowner Motor Inn. James DiMartino, who bought the motel at auction February 10, finally was able to take ownership of the place after getting a court to evict the previous owner, Ralph Ahmad. Under Ahmad's ownership recently both electric service and trash pickup had been discontinued due to the failure to pay bills. The motel was also closed from 2005 to 2007 while asbestos and mold abatement was carried out, but apparently not much renovation went on during that time. The new owner says the place is in a shambles and needs new carpeting, new furniture, and new heating and AC.

The biggest news in the story is that now that the new owner has taken over, he's served an eviction notice to all the residents. The people living in the motel, pretty much all of which live there long-term, need to be out by April 18th. After that the motel will be closed, remodeled, and sold again. What happens after that is still to be seen. Who will buy it? What will they do? Will it reopen as long-term residences? Will it be torn down? Will it be fixed up and marketed to tourists? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Downtown Carson City is featured today at Viewliner Ltd., with pictures from my Western Nevada Historic Photo Collection.

One of my favorite little hidden restaurants downtown has found a new home. Juan's Kitchen used to be located in the back of Mo and Sluggo's bar, at the corner of Telegraph and Curry. Right off of Telegraph Square. You never think of bar food as anything more than just something they whip together to keep the drunks happy and fed, but Juan's not only had good food but also had its own dining room in the back, even with its own entrance off of Curry, so it could be kid friendly. I'd been going there for years, but a little while ago we went and it was closed.

I turns out it wasn't closed forever, though. It was just moving. Last week it reopened in its new home, the Horseshoe Club casino half a block away. I guess the Horseshoe Club offered them kitchen and dining room space and they snatched it up. We went there for dinner tonight, just to try it out and see if it was still the same.

What we found is that it's the same food, just in a new location. The menu is expanded, but most of the old favorites are still there, like the Super Juan, a big beefy burrito that measures nearly twelve inches long. What's new is the name; it's now called Juan's Mexican Grill.

Juan's and B'Sghetti's have always been our two favorite restaurants downtown, and now even though it's in a new location it's still a favorite. The one downside is that it's now inside a smoky casino, but they have a good ventilation system that mostly keeps the smoke away from the dining area. And there is a back entrance off The Alley that gets you right to the restaurant without having to walk past rows and rows of slot machines.

If Juan's has been a favorite of yours, or even if you've never been there before, you need to head down to the Horseshoe Club and check it out.

True West magazine this month has a feature story on the St. Charles Hotel and the work that has been done over the last few years to fix it up and turn it into a centerpiece of downtown. It's a wide-ranging article, alluding to the age of the hotel (146 years) and the poor condition it was in for much of the 20th century. It's been called a flop house, a slop house, and worse. But it's been fixed up beautifully, and now houses an excellent restaurant, the Firkin and Fox.

But the article does make one glaring error in completely ignoring the contributions of Bob McFadden in the hotel's current success. To read the article, it was the efforts of the current owners alone that brought it out of squalor. And while they need to be commended for four years of hard work, it was work that had already begun ten years before they owned the property. It was Bob that bought the hotel in the early 90s, kicked out the sleazy bar from the ground floor, stripped off the cracking plaster from the original brick, and rebuilt the balcony to its 1860s appearance. It was Bob that had the idea to put a classy restaurant in the ground floor, even though the space became a revolving door that was empty more than it was occupied. And it was Bob that took an eyesore of a building and made it into something Carson City could be proud of. In 2004 he decided he'd put enough of his sweat into the place and he sold it to the Lopiccolos. Sadly he died of a heart attack a few weeks later. But we can't let his contribution to downtown Carson City be forgotten.

Mark and Jenny Lopiccolo have continued the work Bob started, and in many ways succeeded where he faltered. Much of the money they've put into the building has gone into strengthening the structure, replacing columns and reinforcing the walls to make sure the St. Charles is around for another 140 years. They were also able to do something Bob never did, attract an excellent tenant for the ground floor. The Firkin and Fox Pub is one of the best additions to downtown in years. And the whole Third Street area really blossomed this past year, with Bella Fiore Wines opening, the new Farmer's Market starting up, and all the events that were constantly happening throughout the summer. The Lopiccolos really have to be credited for jump starting all that, along with Jim Phalan, the owner of the Firkin. But at the same time we can't forget Bob, who was the first one to have a little faith in a dingy building and a forgotten part of town.

The story isn't complete by any means, but let's flip through a St. Charles photo gallery, following it through the years.

The hotel in the 1870s, when it could still be considered in its heyday.

1930s, down on its luck.

A brief resurgence in the 1940s.

By the 1980s it was a scar on downtown, an eyesore that no one would look at twice.

2005. All the work here was done by Bob McFadden.

Jim Phalan launches construction in summer 2007.

Late 2007, when the Lopiccolos were fixing it up for the Firkin and Fox opening.

Hat tip to WashoeValley.org for the link to the article.